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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Last week I was busy taking care of sick children and didn't get posted for Wellness Wednesday. Today I stepped on the scale and was disappointed to see that I had gained 3 pounds and I now weigh 315#. :o( Well, instead of dwelling on it, I'm going to use it as an opportunity to get busy. I refuse to let it start climbing back up.

It isn't too much of a surprise because this last week I had a candy binge. Well, I'd rather not be writing this or posting my weight increase, but hopefully if I am honest,The strange thing is that it doesn't taste that great to me anymore. I can taste all the chemicals and it is not satisfying. But my body goes through periods of craving it and I don't mean that I emotionally crave it; I physically crave it! This is something I don't quite understand. Two things I have noticed though, the cravings seem to be worse when I have been too tired to make homemade bread and that after I eat processed sugar my glands become swollen. As for the bread, I am guessing that because I am using fresh ground flour, I am getting vitamins and trace minerals that I don't otherwise. As for the glands, it is well documented that sugar decreases immunity.

As for exercising, the pain in my knee increased and so I had to stop. It is feeling a little better again. So, now I need to work up the gumption to get started again. If you feel led, please pray for me in this.

Now for soup... We had wonderful turkey barley soup after Thanksgiving. It was so good that I'm thinking about doing another turkey at Christmas so that I can make more!

Today, I made soup for dinner. This is a great, thick soup for a cold fall or winter day. First I started with the broth from the beef roast I cooked in the pressure cooker yesterday. Then the fun began. In the Vitamix I blended up some frozen spinach, green onions, celery stalks, a large bunch of broccoli and 4 cloves of garlic. This made a thick green paste that wasn't overly appetizing to look at. I poured it in the pot with 2 bottles of organic spaghetti sauce, 2 packages of frozen veggies, 2.5 cups barley and 6 cans of diced tomatoes (that I blended in the Vitamix to make tomato sauce), then I began adding herbs -savory, oregano, basil, rosemary. Oh, I had half a jar of organic tomato juice in the fridge that I added too and one pound of cooked ground beef. This soup lends itself well to cleaning out the fridge! :o) It cooks up nice and thick more like a chili than soup. It's definitely a hardy dinner and my Hubby likes to take it for lunches. It could be served with cheese or sour cream on top and with fresh bread or corn bread.